Markus Howard Named To 2019 Bob Cousy Award Watch List

On Monday, The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame began their part of the college basketball preseason experience by announcing the official watch list for the 2019 Bob Cousy Point Guard of the Year Award. As you can imagine, the award goes yearly to the player designated as the best point guard in college basketball for a particular season, and there’s a preseason watch list issued by the Hall of Fame to let everyone know the primary candidates for the trophy before the season starts.

Since you’re reading this on this here website (and because you saw the headline at the top of the page and because you had to have clicked on something else that made you aware of it, too), it’s obvious that there’s a Marquette connection here. Junior Markus Howard is one of 20 players on the preseason watch list.

There are two other competitors on the watch list from the Big East. St. John’s junior Shamorie Ponds is on the list, as is Villanova freshman Jahvon Quinerly. In addition to those two, Marquette could see two more players on the watch list during the regular season. MU will face Kansas in the Preseason NIT Tip-Off, and freshman Devon Dotson is included in the list of 20. There’s a chance that Marquette would play Tennessee in their second game of the NIT Tip-Off, and that would mean going up against junior Jordan Bone.

Howard averaged 20.4 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game as a sophomore for Marquette. He compiled a shooting percentage slashline of 46.4% overall, 40.4% from behind the three-point line, and 93.8% from the free throw line. Howard is already one of the 10 most prolific three-point shooters in Marquette history with 193 made triples in just two seasons, and he has already risen to #37 on the all-time scoring chart with 1,104 career points.

As you might expect, the full list of 20 players on the watch list is a pretty impressive group of young men, so it’s hard to say exactly what Howard’s chances are of winning at this point. What we know for sure is that the Hall of Fame will issue a new list of 10 candidates in mid-February, and that list of 10 does not have to come from the 20 players on the preseason watch list. It’s up to Howard to play his way onto the list of 10 as the regular season starts to wind down.

Marquette will open the season on Tuesday, November 6, when they host UMBC. It will be MU’s first regular season game at Fiserv Forum, the new downtown Milwaukee arena.

You can check out the full press release including all 20 watch list honorees right here.